Marie Djemondo Kingome reacts after Bainbridge Island School District Superintendent Peter Bang-Knudsen announces she is a winner of a “BISD STRONG Award” Wednesday.

Bang-Knudsen popped into Kingome’s class at Bainbridge High just after lunchtime to announce she was one of the winners of a STRONG Award for the spring quarter.

A senior at BHS, her family came to the U.S. from the Republic of Congo when she was 12 years old.

She didn’t know English when she landed in middle school, but it’s now her fourth language. Her daily challenges — communication and cultural — are overcome with a powerful strength that BHS staff say are just part of her overall zest for life: remarkable and contagious.

(Brian Kelly | Bainbridge Island Review)